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(The Dry Salvages—presumably les trois sauvages
      — is a small group of rocks, with a beacon, off the N.E.
      coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Salvages is pronounced
      to rhyme with assuages. Groaner: a whistling buoy.)

I

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.

The river is within us, the sea is all about us;
The sea is the land’s edge also, the granite
Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
Its hints of earlier and other creation:
The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale’s backbone;
The pools where it offers to our curiosity
The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.
It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,
The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar
And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices,
Many gods and many voices.
                                       The salt is on the briar rose,
The fog is in the fir trees.
                                       The sea howl
And the sea yelp, are different voices
Often together heard: the whine in the rigging,
The menace and caress of wave that breaks on water,
The distant rote in the granite teeth,
And the wailing warning from the approaching headland
Are all sea voices, and the heaving groaner
Rounded homewards, and the seagull:
And under the oppression of the silent fog
The tolling bell
Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried
Ground swell, a time
Older than the time of chronometers, older
Than time counted by anxious worried women
Lying awake, calculating the future,
Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel
And piece together the past and the future,
Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception,
The future futureless, before the morning watch
When time stops and time is never ending;
And the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning,
Clangs
The bell.

II

Where is there an end of it, the soundless wailing,
The silent withering of autumn flowers
Dropping their petals and remaining motionless;
Where is there and end to the drifting wreckage,
The prayer of the bone on the beach, the unprayable
Prayer at the calamitous annunciation?

There is no end, but addition: the trailing
Consequence of further days and hours,
While emotion takes to itself the emotionless
Years of living among the breakage
Of what was believed in as the most reliable—
And therefore the fittest for renunciation.

There is the final addition, the failing
Pride or resentment at failing powers,
The unattached devotion which might pass for devotionless,
In a drifting boat with a slow leakage,
The silent listening to the undeniable
Clamour of the bell of the last annunciation.

Where is the end of them, the fishermen sailing
Into the wind’s tail, where the fog cowers?
We cannot think of a time that is oceanless
Or of an ocean not littered with wastage
Or of a future that is not liable
Like the past, to have no destination.

We have to think of them as forever bailing,
Setting and hauling, while the North East lowers
Over shallow banks unchanging and erosionless
Or drawing their money, drying sails at dockage;
Not as making a trip that will be unpayable
For a haul that will not bear examination.

There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing,
No end to the withering of withered flowers,
To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,
To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage,
The bone’s prayer to Death its God. Only the hardly, barely prayable
Prayer of the one Annunciation.

It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence—
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness—not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination—
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness. I have said before
That the past experience revived in the meaning
Is not the experience of one life only
But of many generations—not forgetting
Something that is probably quite ineffable:
The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.
Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony
(Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,
Having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,
Is not in question) are likewise permanent
With such permanence as time has. We appreciate this better
In the agony of others, nearly experienced,
Involving ourselves, than in our own.
For our own past is covered by the currents of action,
But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroyer is time the preserver,
Like the river with its cargo of dead negroes, cows and chicken coops,
The bitter apple, and the bite in the apple.
And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
In navigable weather it is always a seamark
To lay a course by: but in the sombre season
Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.

III

I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant—
Among other things—or one way of putting the same thing:
That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray
Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened.
And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.
You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.
When the train starts, and the passengers are settled
To fruit, periodicals and business letters
(And those who saw them off have left the platform)
Their faces relax from grief into relief,
To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.
Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think ‘the past is finished’
Or ‘the future is before us’.
At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial,
Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)
‘Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
At the moment which is not of action or inaction
You can receive this: “on whatever sphere of being
The mind of a man may be intent
At the time of death”—that is the one action
(And the time of death is every moment)
Which shall fructify in the lives of others:
And do not think of the fruit of action.
Fare forward.
                      O voyagers, O ******,
You who came to port, and you whose bodies
Will suffer the trial and judgement of the sea,
Or whatever event, this is your real destination.’
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
                                  Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.

IV

Lady, whose shrine stands on the promontory,
Pray for all those who are in ships, those
Whose business has to do with fish, and
Those concerned with every lawful traffic
And those who conduct them.

Repeat a prayer also on behalf of
Women who have seen their sons or husbands
Setting forth, and not returning:
Figlia del tuo figlio,
Queen of Heaven.

Also pray for those who were in ships, and
Ended their voyage on the sand, in the sea’s lips
Or in the dark throat which will not reject them
Or wherever cannot reach them the sound of the sea bell’s
Perpetual angelus.

V

To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits,
To report the behaviour of the sea monster,
Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry,
Observe disease in signatures, evoke
Biography from the wrinkles of the palm
And tragedy from fingers; release omens
By sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable
With playing cards, fiddle with pentagrams
Or barbituric acids, or dissect
The recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors—
To explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams; all these are usual
Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press:
And always will be, some of them especially
When there is distress of nations and perplexity
Whether on the shores of Asia, or in the Edgware Road.
Men’s curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint—
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime’s death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.
Here the impossible union
Of spheres of existence is actual,
Here the past and future
Are conquered, and reconciled,
Where action were otherwise movement
Of that which is only moved
And has in it no source of movement—
Driven by dæmonic, chthonic
Powers. And right action is freedom
From past and future also.
For most of us, this is the aim
Never here to be realised;
Who are only undefeated
Because we have gone on trying;
We, content at the last
If our temporal reversion nourish
(Not too far from the yew-tree)
The life of significant soil.
RW Dennen Sep 2014
Candleabra's flickering flames
cast a shimmering dancing
shadow of me,
upon my golden coffer overhead,
brought about by a sudden gust
of window-wind... God's finger-breeze...

Master airy-finger puppeteer
you are
dance the leaves
about my Autumn yard...

Push and stir
soft light newly blanketed wintry snow
on lifting eddies,
causing flying fancy, barnyard dancer's dos-a-dos
among infinitesimal,
and featherweight
delicately frozen
crystal-looking flakes...

Push tiny tango waves
upon reflected sparkling silvery lakes
that crest s l i d e then fall
And spectator trees
that enciricle about the watery ballroom-lake
surface-floor,
then with airy fingertips
clap, clap together
the loudly whispering and rustling leaves
that applaud
the watery dancing waves below...

And with windy fingertips
sail white billowing cotton like
vapor-sails
across an unplowable
oceanless
spatial blue...

Glad God
You mostly are
puppeteer of every star
Dance sundries of objects
on your play-ball planet
and puppet-likened stage
And let me laugh
in zestful rage
about danceable things
that can be danced,
that can be danced
on windy-finger days...
Eric W May 2018
Shouldn't we see the world for what it is? Whether the land as barren as an oceanless sea or a forest thick with shrubs and trees of green and wildlife prouncing about. Can we not take what we want if we both want the same? What are miles as the crow flies and leopards roam? Are we not creatures of the flesh? We should ravish these bodies in the blistering sun of our own making; it would be so easy.
      It's like the world has stopped turning, and yet the birds still sing. We are silent. The nights and days grow longer; we know it's only a matter of time. It slips. The time slips, and we are complicit in its passing over us. We are frozen and complacently lost in the reveries of the words caught in our lungs.
      I am asking every question I can. Why now? Why should I long for something which I do not yet know? Yet I do. We kick up dust in our rhetorical dance, and it is only the steady rain of the passing days that can settle it again.
      We both have roots in places not near. What does it mean to uproot the life? A transplant to other lands, and if anything should go wrong, we might rot into the soil if only to be reborn again — we are resilient and as sure as a passing day. Let me water your roots where ever they choose to grow, and let me shine down to encourage where ever you choose to bloom.
Marshal Gebbie Mar 2011
Clear and crystal
So anciently old,
So brilliantly fluid
And tastelessly cold.
To coalesce in vapour
Of limitless cloud,
To fall in fat globules
Of rainfall in shroud.

To cascade through air
As a mist in the fall
Or plummet as downpour
Through Calcutta’s pall.
Gathered in puddles
To flow down a drain,
Amass as a flood
To pour across plain.
To playfully tumble
From mountains of shard,
To flow to the sea
Where the surf crashes hard.

A field of marigolds
Bobbing in sun,
Nurtured by moisture’s
Life giving fun.
Green grasses grow
With barley and wheat,
Through the magic administered
By wetness’s feat.
Imagine disaster’s
Protracted drought
Where dryness obliterates
Green life throughout.

Sparkling clear waterfalls,
Hard pounding surf,
Trickles of crystalline
Cascades of mirth.
Rock pools so clear
That trout can be seen
And the bone china cup of tea
Served to the Queen.

Standing in rain
As it pours from the sky
With a grin on my face
Smearing mud from my eye
With arms outstretched
And a song in my heart
For the great joy of living
This water imparts....

Water my Angel,
My priceless gem.
A waterless world
Would bring death and mayhem.
An oceanless planet
As seen from the moon,
Would lack life giving blueness
And be hued in gloom.
Sweet water is life
In a miraculous way,
Thus we hail the Gods
Each rain swept day.

Marshalg
Sitting by the beautiful Manukau Harbour
11 March 2011
Lb Jan 2017
Days past before they knew I was really gone. It wasn’t my fault it was hers. She reels you in with her false hopes, I try to ignore them but her whispers morph into eccentric thuds and before you know it you’re drowning.

She Sits in my belly distant yet close. The old tedious Lady hope.“Just give me a chance” she begs I glare at her in disgust. She questions me “Why do you keep me here if you aren’t willing to listen to me?”. I freeze and stare at her. She knows why I won’t let her leave but she just wants to hear it. I refuse to give her the satisfaction. I like to think that I don’t need saving, even if I do.

She keeps her distance and for good reason. She’s an old acquaintance, she isn’t fond of me and nor am I of her yet she doesn’t often leave me. She knows deep down that if it wasn’t for her I would be alone and unprotected.  She whispers words of encouragement and only speaks of optimism. I constantly discard it.
She whispers to me sweetly “you’ll escape you will be someone somewhere”. She tried to escape yesterday so I locked the door. She’s grown tired of me neglecting her.
I pushed her too far and with that she was gone. There I was unprotected. Alone and Vulnerable. Just waiting to be ****** into a whirlpool of my own troubles.

“One day in town at the edge of the world the tide went out and never returned. At first people were little more than puzzled. A desert of unbelievable magnitude was forming before their very eyes”.
It swallowed me whole took me right out into the ocean. We both vanished without a trace. Not a drop to be seen. She had left me for good.

Hope ran away but truth soon replaced her.
Truth was always blunt and never held anything back it made me miss hope. I realised that you don’t appreciate something until it’s gone.
Truth would try to manipulate me and play me like a puppet. Truth liked to play God and watch me suffer. I was trapped because with truth came all the lies that had been hiding it. The lies are what hurt the most. Perhaps their intentions were good but the outcome wasn’t.
Waves washed over me attempting to cleanse me, help me, push me up to shore. Hope had returned but she was too late I had already drowned.
People began to notice the empty seat in class and the oceanless beach. The ocean had left and taken me with it. A sudden eruption of panic and despair trembled in their voices as they searched for the ocean and I.
It was for certain that I was gone. A melancholy shadow swept the whole town. Once the adrenalin had left, everyone was overpowered with fear.“They had no choice but to face each other in their loss together and alone”.
Our memory faded quickly, everyone began to grow comfortable and fill in all our ugly holes. It bothers me that I was that easily forgotten then again I didn’t exactly try to make my mark because all I wanted to do was leave. I guess this was just a different way of leaving.
Christina Smith Sep 2015
Wasted
before I'd even tasted
Knowing
just not going
Trapped
Although
it all seemed mapped

Unable
was it all
just another fable?
Alone
and very much grown

A shell
in an oceanless hell
Tired
even while wired.

Unhappy
Since birth
Life has been ******
Existing while
also resisting

Cold
just craving a
Lover to hold
Done
over before
I have begun

YOU KNOW
Spun!!
2002
ishaan khandpur Jan 2018
The purple haze,
A shade too dark,
As day loses it's light.

Darkness falls,
Throughout the world,
An ode to lost love tonight.

I see the waves,
From oceanless lands,
A mirage, a beautiful lie.

I see the distance,
And see no end,
An endless void, the fright.

The crest and trough,
Of this quite song,
Love lost to sight.

A teardrop falls,
The building blocks,
Of salty bodies of life.
Melissa Rose Aug 2019
A silver lining
crosses an endless horizon
deep silence echoes
over a waveless shore
I inhale the stillness
and it breathlessly welcomes me
wandering leisurely
into the stream
adrift in oceanless tides
beyond the boundless edges
escaping time
the voiceless in everything
whispers to me
“you are the threading of this tapestry
unveil its serenity”
and the verity of love
became me
8/9/19
Colm Jun 2021
Don't care for shadows
Just as sunshine cannot keep
And stars must burn out
All in their oceanless end
So we also soon will be

(Inevitable)
Yup

— The End —